CURATORS: NATALIE KING AND DJON MUNDINE CONTENTS Foreword 3 Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano 54 Djon Mundine and Natalie King Whisper in My Mask 5 Romaine Moreton 58 Diane Bell Nasim Nasr 62 Weaving and Whispers: Miwi Wisdom 12 Polixeni Papapetrou 66 John von Sturmer Plotlines: A Masquerade 16 Elizabeth Pedler 70 boat-people 22 Sangeeta Sandrasegar 74 Daniel Boyd 26 The Telepathy Project (Veronica Kent and Sean Peoples) 78 Søren Dahlgaard 30 The Tjanpi Desert Weavers Project Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser 34 with Fiona Hall 82 Karla Dickens 38 List of works 86 Fiona Foley 42 Biographies 88 Tony Garifalakis 46 Acknowledgements 103 Sandra Hill 50 2 TARRAWARRA BIENNIAL 2014 FOREWORD The TarraWarra Museum of Art was In 2006, the inaugural director Maudie Palmer AO, We are indebted to our principal sponsor, the established as a company limited by initiated the TarraWarra Biennial as a signature Besen Family Foundation, for their support of guarantee in October 2000 and was the exhibition to identify new developments in the Museum. We acknowledge the generous first privately funded public visual arts contemporary art. I have had the good fortune support of Paoli Smith Creative Agency and museum to be set up under the Australian to curate two of these exhibitions Parallel Lives: RACV Healesville Country Club. The TarraWarra Government’s philanthropic measures Australian Painting Today in 2006 and Sonic Biennial 2014 is also an official partner with the announced in March 1999. The Museum Spheres 2012. In 2008 the Museum presented 2014 Melbourne Art Fair, 13 - 17 of August, held opened in Healesville, Victoria, in 2003 Lost & Found: An Archeology of the Present at the Royal Exhibition Building. On Sunday 19 as a not-for-profit institution, with a curated by Charlotte Day; in 2010 TWMA October 2014, specially timed to take place as a charter to display Australian and Contemporary showcased contemporary art part of the Melbourne Festival, 10 – 26 October international art from the second half of through the eyes of a diverse group of individuals; 2014, the TarraWarra Biennial will feature a day the twentieth century to the present day. and this year, guest curators Natalie King and of live performances, artists’ talks, curators’ Djon Mundine have curated Whisper in My Mask. talks and innovative and unexpected actions. Founders Eva Besen AO and Marc Besen AO Each of these exhibitions has focused on The TarraWarra Biennial 2014: Whisper in have been passionate collectors of Australian art a particular idea, theme or tendency. The My Mask has been assisted by the Australian since the 1950s, when they purchased significant biennial series is not intended to be a survey Government through the Australia Council, its works by the artists of their time. Not only did nor does it focus on the global market place. arts funding and advisory body and the State they gift the building that houses the museum, Rather it establishes refined connections and Government of Victoria through Arts Victoria. and 10 acres of land on a 99 year lease, they also re-readings of contemporary art practice in We are also indebted to the Wilin Centre for donated a significant proportion of their private Australia today. Taking a line from the evocative Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development who collection for the enjoyment of the public. song ‘Art Groupie’ (1981) by singer, actress have assisted with the Tjanpi Desert Weavers, TarraWarra Museum of Art is committed to and model Grace Jones, the title of this year’s and the Healesville Hotel who have supported promote, develop and exhibit the collection, TarraWarra Biennial, Whisper in My Mask, signals The Telepathy Project. and generate and host exhibitions of modern an exploration of masking, secrets and hidden On behalf of the Museum, I extend my gratitude and contemporary art from both Australia and narratives as psychological states. Indeed to Natalie King and Djon Mundine for their vision, abroad. Our aim is to promote access to and we live in an era where masking has multiple and to the artists and authors for sharing their encourage participation in the Museum in order expressions: as the political cover-up, as an work with us. I wish to thank Eva and Marc Besen to foster knowledgeable, passionate and critically adopted persona and as a cultural expression. and the Board of TarraWarra Museum of Art aware audiences; and to stimulate innovative and From the tattoo to the clown, from the sacred for their continued support of the TarraWarra creative activities by providing exhibitions and and secret to the layers of misinformation Biennial. Finally, our sincere gratitude is also public programs that make an original contribution that conceal significant Australian stories, this extended to the highly motivated and committed to the fields of modern and contemporary art. exhibition provides a wide array of engagement staff and volunteers of the Museum. with the notion of the mask and masking. Victoria Lynn – Director WHISPER IN MY MASK 3 WHISPER IN MY MASK Djon Mundine and Natalie King Love Me in a Picture, Taking a line from the evocative song ‘Art us to human senses and the Djambarrpuyngu Groupie’ (1981) by singer, actress and model (of Arnhem land in the Northern Territory) Kiss Me in a Cast, Grace Jones, the title of this year’s biennial people’s palate, experienced on a scale from Whisper in my Mask signals an exploration of monuk (salt) to rapine (sweet), a range that Touch Me in a Sculpture, masking, secrets and hidden narratives as encompasses both bitterness and pleasure at psychological states. Three years later Jones’ one and the same time both physiologically Whisper in My Mask. body became a painted surface for graffiti artist and emotionally. Moreover, masking suggests Keith Haring emblazoned with concentric circles, altered states of reverie and otherworldliness Grace Jones, ‘Art Groupie’ (1981) his characteristic pictograms and decorative intertwined with local mysteries and motifs. Subsequently, Robert Mapplethorpe parapsychology. photographed Jones concealed and gesticulating Disguise manifests as trace, inscription, erasure, with an elaborate headdress thereby ushering secrets, camouflage, veiling, whisperings, in ideas of masquerade and transformative ‘dreamings’ and subterfuge. These ideas infiltrate personas. The biennial commences with this the biennial as a series of trigger points by song, like a soundtrack alongside two key works incorporating a range of artworks that include from the TarraWarra Museum of Art collection sound, video, performance and participatory that invoke bodily inscriptions while referencing installations by cross-generational Aboriginal masks worn for fun and frivolity. Howard Arkley’s and non-Aboriginal artists. The biennial has Tattooed head (1983) and Robert Dickerson’s been extended beyond the museum confines, The clown (1958) are a prelude at the museum whispering into other locations. In order to entrance or threshold: a playful deceit to invoke mobilise the local community, projects will be those social masks tattooed onto our psyche. presented in the Healesville Hotel and in the The etymology of the word ‘mask’ derives from verdant grounds surrounding the museum during the Latin word for image, imago, which can the Melbourne Festival. We want the biennial refer to the death mask but also phantom and to be transformative and iterative, an active transformation. The mask in its multifarious platform encompassing new works and ideas forms and functions can both reveal and taking up residence throughout the three- conceal personalities; it can protect, beautify, month duration of the exhibition. Happenings, frighten or pacify, universalise or eternalise, performances and events have been specially LEFT: intensifying and amplifying expression. In a conceived to punctuate the exhibition as a Fiona Hall selection of works that elicit an emotional participatory and volatile format. Work in progress from Tjukurrpa Kumpilitja (Hidden Stories) 2014 and sensory response, the biennial will return Tjanpi grass, raffia, emu feathers, sardine tins, paint, military camouflage fabric dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney WHISPER IN MY MASK 5 American artist Fred Wilson’s Venice Biennale Is masking an attribute of the powerful? In his this basic tool. In the first Aboriginal, black exhibition Speak of me as I am (2003) pointed research for The Last Man, A British Genocide theatre productions in Sydney of the 1970s, to the long and continuing presence of black in Tasmania (2014), Professor Tom Lawson some actors from the all black casts wore Africans in Venice and, by inference, in wider concluded that genocide could be said to white masks to play white people. There are European society and culture. It was no accident be an integral feature of the British Empire. a myriad of masks and disguises that sneak that Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Othello, the up on us, to whisper to us seductively. In the macabre ‘black face’ portraits of Moor of Venice (c.1603) was set in the city that Whispering is an intimate act of uttering in presidents, political leaders and, in his new relishes an annual masked carnival dating back to hushed tones, suggesting secrets, coded speech series Bloodline (2014), depicting European the thirteenth century. Masks may be intentional and quiet murmurings. Alternative forms of royalty, Tony Garifalakis reveals the mask of crime or accidental – worn voluntarily or imposed communication from the Austrian yodeling associated with all power. Behind every fortune upon us. We have any number of masks forced of Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser’s video there is a crime, and the old truism, that all on us by society such as the mask of make-up projection Misdirection (2014) to Nasim Nasr’s power ultimately corrupts. Ambiguously charging in Naomi Wolfe’s The Beauty Myth (1990); the Persian clicking with both hands in Beshkan those in authority while poking fun, like a clown’s timely quip from feminist Gloria Steinem: ‘We (Breakdown) (2013), heightens other sonic ‘pie in the face’, an evil cold glare still chillingly are all trained to be female impersonators’; or modes of communication.